~ Musings on Authorship & Inspiration

The Journey or the Destination?

These past couple of months, the slow, slow sales have comprised the backdrop to rising doubts on my part about my chosen course of self-publishing.

The novels I have up there haven’t been selling much at all–maybe a copy or two a week–while the new anthology that I launched last week has sold exactly one copy (to a friend, who very kindly downloaded a copy shortly after the launch! :-D). Of course, there are mitigating circumstances.

I am giving away the first novella in the collection. I had 60 downloads of that in the first week. So, many people who downloaded it might not yet have read the novella–and in particular, those who actually like it enough to want to download the full, paid anthology. So even with the free download, it might not have found its audience as yet.

And yes, there are a number of additional factors that no doubt go into this. But I cannot help but wonder whether the recent changes at Amazon have just pushed the books out of visibility.

Naturally, there are things I can do to get myself out there. I’ve done a few interviews and hope to do more going forward, but I always wonder how much impact those have. How much of my as-yet undiscovered audience (who will require some convincing that they are my audience in the first place) are likely to find me? Of course, the more places that I am, and the greater number of websites where I have a presence, will mean that there’s a greater chance my audience will find me! But will they?!

These past, slow weeks have made me wonder whether the traditional publishing route is the best one to take after all.

Self-doubt, loss of faith, and all the other demons to which we are so vulnerable in our creative lives have been getting restless.

I’d still have to promote with a big pubco, but at least there’s some chance that I’d get some better visibility and leverage by association with one of the biggies, who would have some clout or have negotiated better placement (indeed, this may be part of the way forward for pubcos that re-emerge and become dominant in the years to come).

And yet, and yet, AND YET…

I still can’t get there.

If I sign over to a pubco, then my revenue percentage goes way down. Obviously. The temptation is to believe that whatever better placement the big publisher can buy will mean that many more sales, and will more than make up for that dip in per-item revenue. Perhaps. But that assumes that as an unknown newcomer, I’ll:

manage to make that sale to the pubco in the first place, during these uncertain times; and

even get that kind of support from a pubco with bigger fish to fry, during these uncertain times.

And even if I do, that exposure will be on their terms. Their cover art. In high rotation for however long they deem is appropriate, even if that’s not realistically long enough to sell the book of a newcomer who is busy trying to build her own platform and find her audience.

So, by putting my books out under my publishing company, I can give them time to find their audience. I might not have the money and the leverage to get favourable placement, but by blogging and doing interviews, and taking other steps to promote and connect with people, I end up getting placement of another sort. And I do believe that you ultimately have to grow your audience one reader at a time. The big pubco probably wouldn’t provide me with the time to do that. My own pubco will. Sure, it’ll take longer. But in truth, I’ve always loved the persistent diligence of the tortoise. I don’t mind trundling along.

I also love the control. I love going at my own pace. I love that I can shop around for cover artists whose work I love, I can contact them and make those decisions about who will do that work.

I love the empowerment of it, even if I feel like I’m spending my every spare moment (and some not-so-spare moments, to boot!) promoting or building platform, while the “expensive, delicate ship… sails calmly on”–i.e. the world continues on its path, serenely indifferent to my efforts. Of course, I don’t want the world to take notice, necessarily–I just want to find those people out there who might enjoy my books–my readers. But to do that, I need to sow widely and see what falls on fertile ground. It’s still nice to be doing it myself, as I can. I put enough pressure on myself–I wouldn’t need the extra pressure of a pubco with a bottom line breathing down my neck, and the worry that I’d need a certain basic threshold of sell-throughs to get another book published.

And even the fact that the promo takes me away from writing finds its answer in the fact that I am not someone who can write all the time. My creativity seems to work along the same principles as crop rotation. I write fiction madly and productively, and then lie fallow. The soil has to regenerate, regain nutrients, and grow fecund and creative once again. While I wait for my fiction writing self to regenerate, I can market. Indeed, the process of going out there, connecting with great people just for fun, knowing that some of them might buy my books but many of them won’t, and being fine with that, is regenerative. So is the search for interesting things to tweet about and discuss (which also ends up being a way of nurturing the creative soil and getting it ready for another burst of creative production).

This isn’t to say that I would say no to a really good deal if offered one tomorrow–nor that I wouldn’t look to work with some of the cool e-pubcos that are out there these days. There are some great companies out there, who are fair in their royalties and their expectations, and I’d be thrilled to work with some of them at some point.

But for now, I’m enjoying this venture. I need to remind myself of that. I need to let go, once again, of the all-too-compelling dream that the books will become a big revenue stream that will change my life. If they don’t, they don’t. I have to remind myself that I love the process–it’s been so much fun, so challenging, and so engaging, over the past months, to try this exciting new venture. I need to do this for itself. If the rest comes, it comes (and that would be great). But if it doesn’t, I need to remember that I’m doing this for the pleasure of the journey.

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13 thoughts on “The Journey or the Destination?”

It’s very difficult to say exactly why books do or don’t sell as we hoped, but with two books and a short story published on Smashwords and B & N, I’ve come to a few conclusions about what worked for me. I serialized both novels on my Live Journal blog, well before they were published. That established a base readership. I had special coupons for early readers, but have never given my two novels away. I’ve been blogging here on WordPress since well before I published the first novel, and post fairly regularly. I participate on Goodreads, both as a reader and an author, but mostly as a reader.

In the nearly four months the first novel has been on Smashwords and slightly over a month the second has been there, I’ve sold 45 books. They’re not in a popular genre. I’m not on Facebook or Google+. I barely use Twitter. I haven’t done any interviews or blog tours. My sales aren’t exceptional, but they’ve been steady, except for the period when I made the mistake of pressing the button that put them in the Adult category, along with porn and erotica. Since changing that setting, they’re selling again. My conclusion? It takes a long time to establish yourself on the internet. You need to start long before you publish your first book. You don’t have to give your books away.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Catana! It’s so helpful to hear how people have approached their careers and have approached the challenge of growing their audiences and finding the readers who will enjoy their books.

I must agree re the time it takes to establish yourself on the internet. I admire your longevity in working at it for so long–and congratulations on the book sales! That’s fabulous.

Re blogging etc.: I’ve been struggling to keep things flowing and going on this blog, particularly now that school has started to heat up and the term papers are making an appearance on a fast-approaching horizon! I also really love that you serialized the novels before they were published.

I am a fence-sitter on the giving away thing, to be honest. I love the idea of it, but am not sure how it fits into a long-term business model. As well–my download of a free anthology of flash fiction impressed me enough to want to buy more of that author’s work when I have time to read again. That simple, personal and non-empirical response to the “free” really changed my perspective on it, in its favor. Still, your process of having the serial versions of the books on your livejournal site would probably accomplish the same thing as that, however–namely, allowing readers to sample your writing at as great length as they want, and then choose to purchase it if they’re loving it and don’t want the inconvenience of the serialized format.

My rationale with Don Coyote is that it’s a controlled and complete sample of something from the anthology (whereas asking smashwords to sample, say 20% seems imprecise, especially when you want readers to be able to access a full, single story, while Amazon’s sampling will also not provide the length of excerpt one wants). I feel strange charging for it, because anyone who likes it enough to buy the anthology is going to get it in the paid one again and might feel they’re paying for the same thing twice. And as for those who don’t, well they probably won’t get the book in the first place. So, for now, it’s free, by way of what I consider a proper excerpt.

I’m looking at Goodreads–a little snafu that was all my fault has meant that I’ve got a bit of a time lag before I can get on there. And then, it will be a learning curve to figure out how things work over that way!

Thanks again for stopping by and leaving a comment–very helpful!. I’ve popped over to your blog and look forward to exploring it in further detail (the challenge will be refraining while I’m sitting in the class that starts in about 20 min… :-P).

Kat, making the decision to serialize, even though they were early drafts, was very difficult. There was the fear of plagarism, weakening future sales, etc. But it was worth it. Not only did I get wonderful feedback as each episode went up, Sales of the first novel were immediate when it was published.

And, just to clarify–the short story on Smashwords is free, and I’ll be publishing other free stories as I finish them. I do believe in free as a way of interesting people in my writing, but a novel is just too much investment for me to give away. I believe it would be worthwhile to give a first novel away if at least one more could be published for sale, simultaneously, but most new novelists can’t do that.

Catana, I could certainly see that it would be a tough process, and I really admire that you did! I’d have to go through a similar process of self-searching and decision-making, if I were to attempt such a venture. I love the idea of growing a following that way–it seems so cool and organic. But, my writing process is such that I don’t know if having people read and comment on the work in progress would throw me off. I remember when I was in a critique group doing chapter-by-chapter comments, the constructive criticism was great–what actually threw me off were those rare occasions when everyone was really positive and excited. I found that if I didn’t know where the story was going, then in the face of positive feedback, my muses would start getting blocked because of some fear about being able to deliver on the expectations!

But I’m going to consider it for a future project… It might be a good way to incentivize revisions on a given project, actually. That’s always my stumbling block! If you still have them up, I’m going to cruise over there and check out the mechanics (chapter by chapter, or X number of words per installment) etc. If they’re no longer up, then I’d love to know about your approaches to those things, if you don’t mind sharing. If you want to take it off the comment thread, I’m at writer [dot] katanthony [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thanks also for clarifying re the giveaways–I see what you’re saying and agree.

Your stories sound really intriguing. I’ve downloaded the SS and am looking forward to checking it out! I just wish I had more time to read non-school stuff!

The motifs you deal with in general are also intriguing to me. I’m in some fascinating human rights courses right now, and my forthcoming novel is set in a fantasy equivalent of serfdom-era, 19th century Russia (serfdom in Russia ended at about the same time as slavery in the US). Questions of autonomy (where is that situated, and how do you uncover it when you are born and raised believing that you do not have it?) were part of what intrigued me about the setting.

Hey Kimberly! How are you doing? It’s great to hear from you! 😀 Thanks so much for taking the time to read the blog, and for stopping by to comment.

Yes, I think this is the reason–lack of gatekeeping means that on the one hand, people are less likely to take a risk on an unknown and self-pubbed writer, and on the other, the work involved in imposing your own quality control is problematic. In leisure reading, it’s entirely reasonable to expect to just be able to pick up something that sounds cool, and not have to take a whole lot of steps to figure out if the book will be worth your precious spare time.

That I think is a challenge of a self-pub: namely, trying to make it easy for interested readers (who will be a subset of the wider readership in the first place, because they’ll be the ones who want to support the indies) to figure out if your book is something they want. So of course, have substantial samples (whether people read the whole thing, or just a few pages) so that people can get a sense of your writing style and story shaping. The other challenge, which I know all too well as a reader, is the question of whether a writer can actually tie up and resolve a story–and this is entirely separate from the question of whether they’ve got the basic grammar and syntax down. It’s also something that’s not determinable from an opening sample (as was tellingly brought home to me recently, when I read an indie work that had a really great, promising opening sample, and just didn’t… come together in the full execution). Publishers provide some quality control around that. Reviews are the next best option and it seems to be where many readers are turning, for now.

I’m hoping things like the Don Coyote sample will help with that process of making it easier for readers. Catana’s serialized novel idea would do that too.

But it’s a core challenge… And it also requires a reader who is willing to take those preliminary steps, or who is willing to take a chance with the self-pub despite the higher risk involved. That’s potentially a lot to ask, depending on how much time that person has.

Kat, it sounds as if we have some of the same concerns. It’s beginning to look as if all my writing is going to be devoted, in one way or another, to issues of personal freedom and autonomy. Thanks for downloading the story. I hope you enjoy it. I was a bit uncertain about publishing it because it’s actually several “interludes” extracted from my first NaNo novel. But they’re inter-related and give a fairly good (I hope) picture of the new breed I write about.

About serializing. I’ve done it two ways. First, with a completed, close-to-final-draft novel, and also last year’s NaNo novel, as it was being written. Luckily, I plan my NaNo novels within an inch of their lives, so I wasn’t tempted by comments to go off course. But I can see it happening, if you’re not careful.

I’m looking forward to reading it, Catana! Intriguing–excerpts as interludes. What a great idea! And also, most intriguing. Thanks also for clarifying re your serializing methodology. I will look into this further–I’m seriously considering it for some future project, as part of a revision process. Such a cool idea–and also a great way to grow a readership for a work in progress. I hear the livejournal community is a great one for such undertakings… Thanks again for posting, Catana–all these intriguing new ideas now, rising up and starting to percolate!

Hello All,
This is all so new to me. First novel out last year, and as much as i did online, in person, small indie bookstore tour, yes, the sales are slow. I think maybe When No One’s Looking has almost ground to a halt except in my hometown in NM. I’m not sure what to do next so I read your comments Kat and what the other writers post with wide eyes and a huge insatiable curiosity. I’ll stay posted if thats okay. My second novel is just out, I’m starting the marketing, contacting my local media, and wondering if the books will sell.
I want an audience. But then again, I write to make sense of the world, of my observations and experiences. But then again again I want to sell.
Oh well, I’m learning. Hopefully Lucky Shot gets out there and read. We’ll see.
thanks for all your posts,
sleam

Sarah, as unknowns trying to find a readership without the promotional support of a publisher (something in short supply, anyway, these days) we have to keep plugging away and publishing. Everytime you put out a book, it echoes back to those you already have out. The more of a backlist you have, the more likelihood that you will start attracting readers. When you have only one or two books out, that isn’t the time to get discouraged and give up.

Thanks. I am full of inspiration today and have time to play and research on the computer so that makes me see it’s a whole new world out there! I was wondering if you or any of your readers work with publicity companies? Smiths likes my work and is interested…what’s your experience?
s

I’m a hard-core do it yourselfer. I wouldn’t put myself in the hands of a publicity person, even if one offered. My books are small-niche and they’re going to have to pick up readers when and where they can, over a long period of time. I know that some people consider paying for promotion an investment, but it’s not one that I’d be likely to get back in any reasonable length of time. But each person has to make the best informed decision they can about their own work.

I pretty much agree with Catana, Sarah–though would be interested in hearing from any other readers who want to weigh in on the discussion!

Re: books coming out
It’s definitely early days yet, Sarah. I agree re the power of a backlist (I did a post on precisely that a little while back…). Readers who love one work will come back for your next one, and the more books you have out there, the more opportunities there are for readers to find you, and then read your previous works. Even under the old system, you’d only end up earning out your advance and start getting royalty payments after multiple books were out. Backlist is totally key! I did a search on your books–are they available as e-books, or just as print?

Re: publicist
I also agree re the publicist question. It’s not for me, at least not right now (never say “never”…)–but that doesn’t mean that it’s not for everyone. Part of it is that I have really limited funds right now, and just wouldn’t have the budget for it. I’d rather spend what little money I have on the product itself (it’s pretty dang limited, let’s say). And, like Catana, I’m not convinced that the return on investment would be worth it.

The thing is, you need to look at who your likely audience is, first of all. Then, think about whether your book is likely to reach that audience, based on the kinds of services a publicist could offer. My sense is that most publicists will tend to be more about the “broadcast” method (in the sowing seeds sense of the word–throwing the message far and wide). And you will be paying $$ for that broadcast method.

This means that this would work only if you think your book has really wide appeal, and that sending that message out widely will reach the audience. And a lot of those wide-ranging messages seem to be using media that people no longer turn to for reading material. (e.g. I seem hear about a lot of publicists looking into getting radio spots[?!?]. I cannot remember the last time I bought a book from listening to a radio spot about it. I don’t think it’s the way most people roll. But you’d be paying for someone to arrange that for you, because it does take effort to do. But is it worthwhile effort?)

If your book is more likely to appeal to a niche audience (and most books are), you might well be better off brainstorming about how to find your audience, and spending any time and resources you have following through on that–seeking out the social media or real life places that your potential audience frequents, and then heading over and connecting with people, making friends, and seeing what comes of it! If you find a publicist whom you think could help you find and target that audience and you have the budget for it, then that’s the point at which to consider it. And then, consider what they can bring to the table. For me, right now, I want to connect with people, as an individual, with other individuals–and no-one can do that for me. Maybe further down the line, a publicist will pitch me on something that will blow my mind and make it seem worthwhile to work with him or her–but I’m a sceptic at this point…

And with social media, in connecting with people and making friends–you can’t delegate or assign that. But again, if you’ve got a persuasive marketing plan from them that you’ve gone over with a critical eye, that you think will reach the audience you’re seeking, then consider it for sure.

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